


Fire and Sleet and Candlelight

by wilderswans



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Emotional Abuse, Fantasy Religious Cults, Historical Fantasy, Horror, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Physical Abuse, M/M, Magic, Mild Gore, Religious Cults, Suspense, Unsettling Imagery, Withholding Food as Punishment, Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?, hunger, romantic relationship between two people who were raised as siblings, the witch au, they do not consider themselves siblings!!, winter is coming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-06-11 22:04:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15325353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilderswans/pseuds/wilderswans
Summary: On the very outskirts of the Dwendalian Empire's frontier, Caleb Widogast lives with his adoptive father and siblings, trying to survive the harsh winters and earn forgiveness for the accident of his birth - the magical powers that mean damnation in the religious sect Father Ikithon raises his adopted children into.But now, on the cusp of a cold and isolated winter, strange things are happening on their homestead.





	1. Chapter 1

The sun rises early in a sky like curdled milk, and Caleb stirs beneath his blanket as soon as the thin rays of light pierce the tiny windowpane, lancing through the thin skin of his eyelids. The air is cold, and the temptation to stay abed is so strong that he almost closes his eyes again, but for the crowing of the rooster in the coop. Dawn breaks, the animals need feeding, the fire needs stoking, and he must get up.

Across the room, he hears Astrid’s sleepy grumbling from her own little bed, and Eodwulf has halfway risen, scrubbing sleep from his eyes with balled fists. Downstairs, Caleb can hear heavy footfalls that mean Trent - Father Ikithon - is already awake.

He pulls his boots and coat on, wrapping his favored woolen scarf twice around his neck before opening the door to the room. Usually he’d have splashed water on his face after waking, but last week the weather had begun to get so cold the pitcher and basin in their room had frozen solid. It must wait until after the fires are lit.

Caleb descends the little wooden staircase separating upper bedroom from lower level. Trent is already sitting at the table, gnarled hands clasped, one on top of the other on the battered wooden surface. Caleb ducks his head in deference, hearing Astrid and Eodwulf descending behind him.

“Good morning, Father,” Caleb says. Astrid echoes him, as does Eodwulf. Trent waves them off silently: _There is work to be done_ , the gesture says. Morning pleasantries can come after.

Outside, the air is so cold that it steals Caleb’s breath away, though no snow has yet fallen. He can see his breath steaming in the air. The clearing that their cabin and barn nestle in overlooks the bend in a river, and the grey roiling waters perfectly mirror the grey roiling clouds ahead. There will be snow soon, Caleb thinks. There always is. He cannot help his perfect memory and sense of time, though often he has prayed to be stripped of them, to be cast in simpler form. But no matter his prayers, he knows: Exactly three hundred and sixty days ago the snows came to blanket autumn’s dying bounty, and he knows that within five days the circle of the year will have made a full turn. The snows will come within five days.

Caleb walks to the barn, rubbing his hands together. Behind the wooden doors he can hear the animals stomping, restless, eager to get out and glean what warmth they can from the weak sun that continues to disappear and reappear behind the clouds.

At the woodpile to the side of the cabin, Astrid splits logs for the fires. At the well, Eodwulf draws the day’s water. The chickens scatter around Caleb’s feet when he unlocks and opens the bar, dithering for a handful of cracked corn, and the rest of the animals low and bleat and orbit around him as he fills the feed troughs with grain and the summer’s hay.

The water trough is frozen over, and Caleb can almost see his own reflection, but muted, in the thick glaze of ice atop the water. For a moment the temptation is there. The tips of his fingers itch, almost a burn. It would be so easy, the rebellious part of Caleb’s heart whispers - to unleash what lives inside of him, to make one part of the morning easy.

It would also be monstrous. Caleb takes the butt end of the shovel leaning against the barn and batters the layer of ice until it cracks so the sheep jostling around the trough can drink.

The tabby barn cat winds around his ankles as he ducks into the coop, purring. He murmurs a fond greeting to it, feeling his chest grow warm with affection when the purrs only grow louder, the feline head butting against his shins. He has to be mindful not to trip over the cat as he opens the nesting boxes, his patting through the straw yielding only a handful of eggs. Six eggs, from a flock of nearly a dozen hens - but that is to be expected, with the days growing shorter and colder. He shoos the cat out of the coop, hands curled delicately around the eggs to bring them back up to the house. At the very least, they will make a fine breakfast.

Astrid has started the hearth fire and Eodwulf poured a kettle of fresh water to hang over the flame, and Ikithon’s gnarled hands are now measuring out scoops of black tea from a packet into the battered teapot. Caleb sets down the eggs on the kitchen table, watching Ikithon from the corner of his eye as he wipes stray bits of straw and feathers from the shells with a kitchen rag. The joints in the old man’s fingers are swollen, his movements stiff. Caleb remembers seeing those hands for the first time, how enormous and powerful they had seemed. They were the sorts of hands that could guide, protect, build. He has always trusted those hands to do so, even when they hurt. Father always knew what he was doing and Caleb was sure he would never lead his three children astray.

“The water will be ready soon, Father,” Eodwulf says from the hearth. Ikithon makes a pleased rumble from behind his beard, folding the packet of tea shut and placing it back in the pantry cabinet.

“Start the eggs, Caleb,” he says. “Astrid, the bread, please.”

Caleb fetches a ceramic bowl to mix the eggs in from the dishboard; Astrid pulls the week’s loaf of bread from the breadbox along with its serrated knife and begins to cut slices directly on the table.

“Father, I’m afraid we’ll need to buy more flour before the snows come,” she says, tucking the knife away. She nods thankfully at Eodwulf when he begins to place the bread into the wrought iron toaster, setting it adjacent to the fire crackling in the hearth. “If the snows are anything like last year, the road to town will be impassable for weeks.”

Ikithon considers, as the kettle begins to whistle. Caleb lets himself tune out of the conversation to crack the eggs into the bowl, lost in the soft details of the kitchen they grew up in, timeless as ever. The crumbs left on the table from Astrid cutting the bread could be from this morning, or last month, or ten years ago. The year turns over and the snows may come, but within the cabin everything is as if frozen in time, unchanging.

He hears Eodwulf gasp from behind him, and snaps to attention, thinking he might have burned himself on the kettle. Then he realizes everyone is staring at him, or rather, at the eggs he’s just cracked into the bowl.

Stark red against the white of the crockery, the yolks are blood through and through. Worse than that, there is something fetid about them - not like rotten eggs, but like rotting meat.

“Caleb,” Ikithon says, in the silence of the kitchen, broken only by the crackle and shifting of logs in the fireplace. “Did you check the eggs yesterday.”

“Yes,” he says. He did. Every morning, Caleb brings in the eggs.

“Were there any that you might have missed, to bring in today?”

“No,” Caleb says. He stares down at his hands, realizes belatedly there is still one empty half of a shell in his right hand. He flings it away on the tabletop, next to the other cracked shells, where it drips leftover gobs of egg white onto the wooden surface.

Fear like bile rises in his throat. This is punishment. He thought about it - was tempted to give into the fire at his fingertips, at the iced-over trough. He thought about it, and now he is being punished. He wants so badly to speak up, to confess, convinced Ikithon will find out one way or another, but can’t summon the words to.

“Pull the toast from the fire, Eodwulf,” Ikithon says, the steel of command in his voice. He rises from his seat, sets those hands with their knotted joints on Caleb’s shoulders, then Astrid’s, forcing them down. He and Eodwulf follow, and it is the four of them kneeling on the cold planks of the kitchen floor.

“We pray to the One, to the Lord of Brilliance, to beg his forgiveness and favor,” Ikithon begins, and soon his voice is joined by three others. Caleb mouths the words, ingrained into him since childhood, trying to reach out with his heart to the great Platinum Dragon, to atone for his evil thoughts. He will do better. He will not be so weak. Tears prick the corners of his eyes as they pray, resolve solidifying in his heart. He will not succumb to the evil running through him as sure as his blood does through his veins. He will deny the curse of his magic.

He will do better. He will be good.

  
***

 

“What do you think happened?” Eodwulf murmurs, watching the slippery mass of congealed eggs drift down the river, eventually overtaken by the water. Caleb bites his lip, rinsing the crock out, then dumping the water and rising it again for good measure.

“Perhaps they’re sick,” Astrid says, her voice worried. Concern creases between her two fair brows. "We can't afford for all the hens to get sick this winter."

Caleb dumps the water again and wipes the inside of the bowl dry with the tail of his fulled woolen scarf. “Why suddenly?” he asks. “Why all of the eggs laid? If it was one hen laid ill, I would understand. But all six of those who are still laying?”

Eodwulf gazes out over the river, pensive. Caleb shudders, wants to draw his brother’s gaze back within safe range. Across the river is the wood - the strand of tall, bare-limbed trees sitting silent against the gray sky. The dark spaces between the tree trunks almost seem to look back at them, standing on the river bank, and Caleb has to tear his own gaze away from them.

The wood is forbidden. As far as Astrid, Eodwulf, and Caleb knew as they grew up, the posts of the fence around their homestead were the last bastion of civilization, the wall against the wild nothing of the frontier beyond. Caleb and Eodwulf still bear the scars from Trent’s fury when, at ages 9 and 11, they had crossed the river to play hide-and-seek between the trees.

Since then, Caleb has felt the wood watches them as much as they watch it. Something about the notion makes the ill omen in the hen’s eggs unsettle him even more.

“Caleb,” Astrid says, taking his hand. Instantly Caleb is on guard, for something in her tone speaks of apprehension, and her lips are pursed, nervous. “You heard Father this morning. He does not think we should try to get to town before the snows come.”

“It is a long journey,” Caleb admits. But she is right: Before their attention was diverted by the festering eggs, Ikithon had been reluctant to expend the money to stock up before the roads became impassable. On a vague level, Caleb agreed with him. Money was short. On the other hand, the winters were long, and the snows grew deep. They didn’t have enough flour to make it through the winter - Caleb checked, once a week, with Astrid.

Astrid bites her lip, clearly hestitant to voice her opinion. “Could...if you could try to convince Father, that we might make the journey in haste,” she says at last. “You’re his favorite, Caleb. You have his ear in a way that Eodwulf and I do not.”

Caleb feels his cheeks flush; instantly he feels immensely guilty. That he is Father’s favorite, and always so eager to seek his approval, has always been the invisible wedge that he feels drives him apart from his siblings. But he must try: He does not fancy the idea of a lean winter without bread. “I will try, Astrid,” he says, no matter his feelings.

She smiles at the words, her face luminously lovely in the pale light. “Thank you, Caleb.”

But there is something they aren’t telling him: Eodwulf is fidgeting with his sleeves as he did when they were children, and something is still far away in Astrid’s eyes. Dread surges in Caleb’s gut. “What....there is something you’re not telling me,” he says, eyes darting between the two of them. He weighs his options for a moment: Astrid is the more accomplished liar of the three of them. Eodwulf, however, he can lean on. “What is wrong, Eodwulf?”

It is Astrid who speaks for their brother, instead. “Caleb,” she says, reaching to take his hand. Immediately Caleb knows the stakes are dire - she is manipulating him. “Caleb, there is something else, but we can’t tell you yet. We need to know if Father will let us go to town for supplies, first.”

In this, at least, she appears sincere. Caleb looks between the two of them, silent for a moment, save for the soft murmur of the river behind them and the wind whistling through the tops of distant trees. He loves them, he decides, and because of this he trusts them, despite knowing they are keeping something from him.

“I will try,” he says at last. “But regardless of if we can get more supplies, you have to tell me.”

Astrid and Eodwulf exchange equally nervous glances, but in the end, his sister nods. “We will,” she says, clasping Caleb’s hand again. “No matter what.”

They clambor up the riverbank together, ready to finish chores in the dwindling hours of daylight still left. Caleb feels eyes on him from the woods, feels the back of his neck raise in gooseflesh, but he does not look back.

  
***

  
Dinner that night is a strained affair, due in no small part to the eggs that morning and the apprehension Caleb feels asking something of Father. Usually they dine at sundown, the meal indicating the end of chores for the day. Caleb’s cursed sense of time tells him it is only five in the evening when the sun begins to dip below the horizon, and the smell of food cooking draws him back into the cabin.

It is Eodwulf’s turn to cook dinner that night, which means he has boiled some of the potatoes in the larder and fried one of the early cabbages in ham drippings after heating the cut of meat in one of the wrought iron skillets. It is simple food, no more elaborate than anything Caleb has eaten in his life here in this cabin, and fills the pinched hollow of his belly with substance and warmth. He savors every bite, but tries not to eat too quickly nor enjoy his food too much: Overindulgence is a slippy slope to laziness, and laziness - as Father Ikithon warned them all in their early lessons - was one of many paths leading to damnation. There was no return from those roads, he said, and so Caleb eats his food in measured bites, chewing a set number of times before swallowing.

None of them speaks. The kitchen table is overtaken by the sound of cutlery on clay plates against the ever-present kitchen fire. However, Caleb notices Astrid’s knuckles are white in their grip around the stem of her fork, and she keeps looking at Caleb whenever Father is looking down at his plate.

Damn it, he realizes. She wanted him to speak tonight.

“Father,” Caleb says, after swallowing a mouthful of potatoes. He sets his fork down, wipes his face with one of the grungy table linens. “Have you decided if we should go to town?”

Father Ikithon also sets his cutlery down, but he still continues chewing as he fixes Caleb with a steely stare. Caleb can’t help but notice his jaw is off-set as he chews, like a cow chewing its cud. Finally, the old man swallows. “I have not,” he says at last.

“I think,” Caleb says, feeling Astrid and Eodwulf staring at him as he speaks - he can’t gauge Father’s mood from his impassive gaze, and wonders if he is treading on thin ice. “I think the snows will be deep, this year. If we delay too long, we might -”

He’s cut short by the slam of Father’s meaty palms on the wooden table, he flinches back. The color is high in Father’s face, sparks snap in his eyes.

“Don’t you dare,” Father says, voice low - the growl that is worse than if he had been yelling at Caleb. There is infinitely more danger in Father when he is quiet, and Caleb feels himself shake. “Don’t you _dare_ presume to know better than I what is best for this family, boy.”

Caleb is not a boy. Caleb has been a grown man for a few years, now, but he feels all of four feet tall and ten years old when Father speaks to him like this. He stares down at the remnants of food on his plate, can see how Astrid and Eodwulf glance at each other from the corner of his gaze. “I am sorry, Father. I spoke out of turn.”

Father Ikithon, unplacated, does not yield. “Damned right you spoke out of turn, boy.”

“I beg -” Caleb swallows, his voice suddenly unable to get past the lump in his throat. “I beg your forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness,” Father says, “is not mine to give. Go, finish your day’s work. Your penance shall be to go without meals from dawn to dusk tomorrow. May hunger sharpen your resolve to do better in the eyes of the Great One.”

Caleb rises, abandoning his half-eaten plate and buttoning up his coat. Outside the air is so cold it takes his breath away; he pulls his scarf around his nose and lips before heading to the barn.

The chickens have already roosted for the evening; he locks them away. The cows and sheep have retreated to the warm shelter of their stalls. Caleb bites his lower lip as he shovels fresh hay into their food troughs, the smell of it like dusty summer in his nostrils. It is only when all of the animals are safely put away for the night that he tucks himself into a corner of the hay loft and allows himself to weep.

A creak of old boards startles him away from his tears a few moments later, and he is almost frightened before he realizes the luminescent yellow eyes in the loft belong to the tabby barn cat, who slinks up to him and begins to butt his hands. Sniffling, Caleb opens his arms and the cat crawls into his lap, a warm furry bundle that purrs against his chest soothingly. Caleb does not remember his mother, but wonders if the absolution of a mother’s love would feel the same as the affection from this small creature, so freely given in a cold hay loft.

He cannot delay very long, however. The temperature drops with each minute past sundown, and if he tarries in his work he will be even less in Father’s good graces. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hands and gives one last sniffle, hoping to quell his runny nose. The cat allows him to press a kiss to its little head before leaping off of his lap to scamper into the darker reaches of the barn, keen on rodents to chase.

Caleb descends from the hay loft and gives one last sweep around the barn before locking it up for the night. The animals shift in their stalls, quiet and peaceful, though by now it is so dark he cannot see more than a few feet in front of him. All is well, he thinks, trying to ignore the wavering feeling in his heart.

But something peculiar happens as he turns to shut the doors behind him. It prickles the hairs on the back of his neck, feeling something like fingers through his hair. He shivers and bats at the top of his head, hoping to shake loose whatever cobwebs drifted onto him up in the hayloft, but no webs stick to his hands or come loose.

Caleb shivers, then, but makes himself lock the barn. He doesn’t look at the woods beyond the river when he turns to take in the moonlit yard - the well, the firewood against the side of the cabin, the slow drift of smoke from the chimney.

 _The snows are coming,_ he thinks, and heads inside.


	2. Chapter 2

Caleb jolts awake an hour before dawn, sour sweat beading at his temples and in the hollow of his throat. The air in their room is so cold he can see his breath. No light comes in through the window at the head of his bed, and for a moment he flounders in confusion until he hears Astrid shush him from the foot of his bed.

“Hush now,” she says. “You’ll wake Father up if you continue to thrash about.”

Caleb leans back on his pillow, rubbing his eyes. “What do you want, Astrid?”

It’s Eodwulf who responds. “Caleb,” he says, scarcely a murmur. “We’re sorry. We didn’t know Father would act like that.”

Opening his eyes to squint in the pre-dawn gloom, Caleb frowns in their general direction. “But you have your answer,” he says. “Going to town is out of the question.”

There’s a beat of silence. Through the window, Caleb can hear the distant whistle of cold wind rattling barren branches. Finally, Astrid says, “Is it?”

“Yes,” Caleb says immediately. Something drops out of the bottom of his stomach, much like it had when he saw the bloody flesh in the bowl instead of egg yolks. “Father says so, therefore -”

“Oh, Caleb,” Astrid sighs. Something in her voice is terribly sad, and Caleb wants to shake off her voice, to reject it. “I’m sorry, Caleb. Eodwulf and I were wrong to keep this from you.”

“To keep what?” Caleb demands in a low murmur, looking between their two beds in the darkness.

His answer is a burst of light that erupts from Eodwulf’s palm - and then another, then another. Four identical globes of light emerge from a dark nothing, glowing softly and hovering in midair around the room like paper lanterns, illuminating the darkest corners of the room and reflecting off the cracked mirror on the washstand.

Caleb’s guts turn to ice.

“Put them out,” he hisses. “Are you out of your minds? It is _wrong_ -”

“Is it?” Astrid asks again. Eodwulf closes his palm, and all but one of the lights wink out. Astrid stands, and walks on the balls of her feet over to Caleb’s narrow bed, like a ghost in her white nightgown. In the light of the single globe, Caleb is stricken at how dark the shadows beneath her eyes are. “Eodwulf and I know that there is much Father hasn’t told us.”

“We were afraid to tell you,” Eodwulf admits, from Caleb’s right. “He loves you best.”

“That was a mistake,” Astrid says. “Last spring when we were in town -”

“That was the day the younger of the goats was having twins,” Caleb supplies. The curse of his perfect memory knows the exact day, how the weather was, the way the wind had shifted off the river as two tiny newborn goats, still damp and wobbly, had tottered towards him in the stall.

“Father was occupied in the trading post,” Astrid says, hushed. “We walked between the shops. The _bookstore_ , Caleb....”

Caleb feels a well of longing open within his chest. It is sinful, and wrong, but part of his soul has always pined after books, hungry for knowledge when he should have been hungry for forgiveness. Father Ikithon had taught them all their letters from religious texts, and Caleb had run out of books at age 10 when he’d read the books of healing herbs and recipes stacked on the mantle cover-to-cover.

“What about the bookstore,” he says, voice hollow.

“New books, from the Capitol,” she says. “Pamphlets, advising what to study to be accepted to the Academy.”

“What Academy?”

“A magic academy,” Eodwulf says. The globe of light he conjured seems to quiver with anticipation. “People attend magical academies - they study, and they become skilled with their magic -”

“But --” Caleb begins. It seems as if two sides of his heart are suddenly at war with one another. Magic is a sin, a burden, a curse to try and overcome with the holy light of forgiveness. Why would people eagerly embrace this corruption, and study to increase its power? But on the other hand - _why wouldn’t they?_

“Father has not told us everything,” Astrid says. Her jaw is set, the stubborn square of it unchanged since she was seven years old and squabbling with Caleb for hogging the swing on the maple tree just outside the fence. “I’m angry it took us this long to figure it out.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Caleb asks. He can hear how small and defeated his own voice sounds. “What if there is nothing to be gained from your - your magic, or the Academy? Do you really think you’ll succeed if you go?”

“Do you think we’ll last if we stay?” Eodwulf points out. “You heard him, Caleb. We won’t have enough food for the winter, and he’s not going to let us leave to get more. We’ll starve long before spring.”

“We must leave,” Astrid says firmly. “Wulf and I have a plan. We want you to come with us.”

Caleb bites his lip, looking between the two. Hunger from not finishing his dinner the prior evening, and the prospect of a day with no meals make her argument the slightest bit more persuasive. “What,” he says at last.

“We’re taking food,” she says. “Just little bits, here and there. Not all of it.”

“Enough for the walk to town,” Eodwulf adds. The journey is a full day on foot, two if the days are short and cold like they are now.

“We wrote him a letter,” Astrid says. “To leave for him for when we’re gone.”

Something about this sticks in Caleb’s ear. A moment later he figures out why. “All of this is _we_ ,” he says. He feels unsettled. “What....how long has this been a _we_?”

Part of him suspects the mastermind behind this is Astrid; she has always been clever enough to leave Eodwulf and, often, Caleb running circles in her wake. But to his great surprise, Eodwulf rises from his bed and stands behind Astrid, resting his dark hand on the pale fabric of her shoulder beneath the nightdress. A moment later, she brings her hand up to clasp his.

Something slots into place for Caleb with an echoing click.

“But -” he says, weakly, eyes darting between the two. “We are siblings.”

“Oh, Caleb,” Astrid sighs again, and this time her voice is so unabashedly sad, tears prick at the corners of his eyes. She reaches for his hand with her spare one. “Trent has always called himself our father. But that does not make us siblings.”

“But we love you,” Eodwulf says, and catches himself. “Not like that,” he amends. “We want you to come with us, all the same. Leave with us, Caleb.”

He pauses, and then his murmured, “ _Please_ ,” nearly cracks Caleb’s heart in two.

Caleb remains silent, eyes darting between the two of them. Astrid must see his answer in his face, for she slowly shakes her head and withdraws her hand.

“I told you, Wulf,” she says, mouth turned down at the corners. “I told you he wouldn’t want to come with us.”

“I can’t leave Father,” Caleb says. It’s as good an excuse as any. He shakes his head, hoping that gives him an appearance of conviction. “He’ll die without someone to take care of him over the winter.”

“Then let him die,” Astrid growls, lip curled. “Caleb, he’s starving you because you spoke against him.”

“Which you _asked of me_ ,” Caleb hisses, rounding on her. “And now you ask something else of me. No. I can’t go with you.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” Eodwulf asks.

Caleb doesn’t respond, but he does pull the covers back. He jams his feet into his boots, stands to pull his coat and scarf on.

“I am getting an early start on chores,” he snaps. There is a thin, watery line of grey-blue at the edge of the horizon through the window. That is good enough. He can see by that much light, and do the bulk of his work before he gets too hungry. “Go back to sleep, you two.”

He steps, lightly as he can, over to the door, before pausing with his hand on the latch. “I won’t tell Father you plan to leave,” he says. “But if anything happens, you can’t expect me to intervene. Or to help you,” he adds.

Eodwulf makes a gesture, and the final globe of light goes out, pitching the loft bedroom once more into grey darkness.

“We won’t,” says Astrid. He can hear an intake of breath, as if she wants to say something else, but she must decide against it for there’s only the sound of bedding rustling as she and Eodwulf return to their beds.

Caleb closes the door behind him, careful not to make a sound, and steps silently down the stairs. He has always thought there existed an invisible wedge between him and Astrid and Eodwulf; now he can feel it drive down further and separate them where they stand, like three lonely figures looking at each other from across drifting continents.

  
***

  
Even fully risen, the sun doesn’t appear from behind a blanket of wispy grey clouds, casting the day into a dim pale light that feels muted and strange. Today the winds cut through Caleb’s coat as if it were sheer silk, and he grits his teeth to keep them from chattering as he feeds the animals.

He remembers the effortless way Eodwulf had summoned light in a dark room, and feels his throat grow bitter with jealousy as he hacks at the layer of ice, thicker this morning, in the water trough. _It would be so easy_ , he thinks, watching the goats drink. But sin is easy, the easiest thing in the world, and even if he wasn’t trying so hard to be better, his empty stomach would serve as a reminder.

He doesn’t go in for breakfast, not even for the cup of tea he knows is brewing, watching smoke drift from the chimney between gusts of chilly breezes. What would be the point of that? Playing dumb while looking at Astrid and Eodwulf, and shrinking around with his tail between his legs around Father? No. He spends his breakfast time up in the hayloft, curled up against a stack of hay and trying not to think about the early morning conversation while holding aloft a stem of hay for the tabby to bat at.

When he checks the eggs, he doesn’t bring them inside. A full half-dozen, once again, and the hens don’t look any worse for having laid them. But some fluttering feeling in his gut tells him not to take them into the kitchen, so instead he carries them beyond the fence, down the bank, and to the chattering shore of the river.

His fingers feel like ice as he cracks one smooth, brown-shelled egg against a river rock, and instantly turns to gag.

The whole slippery mass of egg is red, a yolk of quivering flesh within a slippery white of blood. Caleb flings it away from him, and then throws the other five into the water as well. In the distance he can hear Astrid chopping wood, but the rhythmic thumps seem miles away on the breeze.

In this moment at the shore of the river, threads of residual bloody egg white sticky on his fingers, Caleb feels like he is the only person alive in the world. The pale horizon he gazes at, so far away, might as well be the dawn on a new planet, or an uncharted country. The woods in the distance, inky spaces between the trees like black smudges, suddenly don’t seem frightening in that moment.

What, in the woods, has he to be frightened of?

What, in the woods, has hurt him more than the man in the cabin to his back?

The breeze picks up, blowing westerly against him. It’s so cold it steals his breath, but he doesn’t turn to leave.

He closes his eyes, breathes in the air like knives in his lungs. On the wind he can hear so much - voices, hundreds, more people than he’s ever heard speaking at once, all chattering in nonsense languages that brings up longing, deeper than he’s ever felt. It aches in his bones, aches in the empty pit of his stomach, aches in his sore and lonely heart.

Then he remembers to be afraid.

The woods are cursed, Father told them when they were young. They are cursed. Dangerous things live within.

Caleb’s eyes snap open. He turns back to the cabin and barn and the safety of the wooden post fence, and hums a tune from his childhood, low under his breath, until the wind is just wind.

  
***

  
The day does not get warmer, and the work does not get easier on Caleb’s empty stomach. At noon he and Eodwulf go to the high field, the two acres of flat ground that butt up against the stand of trees that conceal the path to town, and Caleb is glad he doesn’t have to stand as he pulls potatoes from the crumbling earth. He doesn’t think he would be able to stand for terribly long.

Satisfying as it is to pull the fist-sized tubers from the ground, dusting the clumps of dirt off before piling them into the wicker basket to his side, Caleb can’t find any happiness in the work. He can’t even find distraction in it, not when the conversation he had with his siblings keeps turning over and over in his head.

Eodwulf is some thirty yards away, back turned to Caleb as he repairs the perimeter fence. When he had come out of the house with a bundle of bread and cheese in one hand and a hammer in the other, he hadn’t been able to meet Caleb’s eyes.

They both knew better than for Wulf to try and share his lunch with Caleb. At least, Caleb thinks, shaking the dirt off another potato, Eodwulf had waited until he was at the fenceline and out of Caleb’s earshot to begin eating.

His stomach growls, empty and cramping, at the tangential thought of food.

This is what he has to look forward to this winter, the traitorous portion of his brain whispers. Even with Astrid and Wulf gone, the amount of flour remaining would still be stretched thin between two people. Would it be so bad to leave this place? He could go with them. He could read books - more books than he’d ever read in his life. He could practice his -

_Yes yes yes_ , his magic chants. A burning hum in his veins, begging to be tapped, stiff and aching to be flexed like an unused muscle.

_No_ , he thinks fiercely at himself. He finds he doesn’t have the mental energy to pray forgiveness for entertaining the thought. If he went with Wulf and Astrid, he tells himself as he rips another potato from the ground, it would be one disaster after another as divine retribution.

They do not have much in the way of money. Caleb thinks they are as likely to beg for food on freezing streets in strange and unfriendly cities as they are to get accepted to a magical academy.

Here, at least, he can control his fate. He must think logically now: What can he do to keep himself and Father fed and warm over the winter?

He will be doing the work of two other people, if Astrid and Eodwulf succeed in their plan. Father’s aching bones do not permit him to do much, but perhaps if he consented to do the work around the house, Caleb could mind the animals and remaining winter crops. Chopping wood was not hard, though he had always struggled with it. Perhaps practice could make him better.

Needs must when the demons drive.

With some apprehension, he turns his mind over to food. His hands still pluck potatoes from the ground, but the practiced motion is automatic now; he spares it no thought. He and Father would have to be careful, with the dwindling flour supply and now the mysterious affliction of the eggs. He does not want to slaughter the chickens if they’re sick, nor eat them if food gets scarce enough.

Perhaps he could fashion some sort of trap for the small animals that live in the woods - but then he remembers that they all sleep for the winter. The river always freezes over, he thinks, but he knows fish still swim beneath the ice. He can catch fish if he breaks through it, perhaps smoke them if the catching is good - he brightens at the thought, feeling himself smile at nothing. His tabby barn cat would not mind at all if he brought home fish to eat.

His thoughts turn over and over again, cycling between planning that he tells himself is proactive and not fearful, and that dangerous imagining.

Empty, his stomach feels as though it’s filled with glass, stabbed through with fragile pain every few moments. It does not dissuade the rebellious thoughts that come, rather, it gives them more conviction than they would have otherwise.

Astrid had been right. Father was starving him today, just as he had struck him as a teen for speaking out of turn, just as he had made him sleep in the barn in the dead of winter and caned him....

Myriad other punishments for myriad other offenses. He doesn’t bear his scars alone. He and Astrid and Eodwulf were all young when they mastered the art of weeping silently.

He wonders how long Astrid and Eodwulf have loved each other - how long they have had each other’s shoulders to weep into. The thought still jars him, but the shock is gradually eroding into something like tired neutrality. He loves them. Somewhere in his heart, he knows they must leave.

Part of him - larger than he cares to admit - wishes he could leave with them. With only Father as company over the winter, he suspects he will drown in the well of loneliness that springs deep within him.

  
***

  
It is just after four-thirty when he and Eodwulf haul the baskets of potatoes and the belt of tools back to the house. The sun is sinking rapidly below the horizon and it is as though all the color is draining out of the world. Tonight is going to be even colder than the last, Caleb knows, and he bites his lip to keep the exhausted groan from slipping out as he hoists the heavy basket of potatoes up the steps and into the warm cabin.

Father is sitting at the kitchen table, peeling the golden rind from a round squash. The movements of his little knife don’t stop as he watches Caleb haul the potatoes into the larder. He remains silent, peeling, and Caleb can feel the weight of yesterday’s confrontation still hovering above him, ready to cascade down and crush him at a moment’s notice.

Does he look contrite enough? Can Father tell if he is forgiven for his errors? Caleb has seen the error of his ways, yes, but not taken them to heart, if that damnable impulse to leave is any indication. But, he thinks, merely seeing the error of his ways isn’t enough to absolve him. He doesn’t know if he can go another day without eating.

These contemplations are violently interrupted when, muffled through the cabin door, Astrid screams.

Potatoes spill around Caleb’s feet; in his haste to run outside he knocks over one of the baskets at the same time he hears the screech of wooden chair on wooden floor as Father throws his knife and the squash to the table. Outside, Astrid is standing at the well, still yelling.

“Father! _Father_!”

For a moment Caleb thinks this is some sort of trick - a misdirection. But then she turns her face to him and Father as they run out of the cabin, door banging behind them, and there is real shock in her wide eyes.

“The well!” Astrid says, before either of them can speak. She’s pulled the cover off from the stone base. On the ground, Caleb can see she had taken the bucket from the house to fetch some water for supper, but something had caused her to drop it. “The water - it’s gone!”

For a moment, Father and Caleb are dumbstruck. They both rush to her side, peering over. Caleb feels his heart thumping away in his throat. Astrid has grabbed his hand, squeezing, and Caleb knows there is no way this is a falsehood or trickery.

The well is dry as bone. There isn’t even a trickle of water down the stone-lined sides, nor leftover drops at the bottom. The well isn’t deep, but even in the driest summers it has never run low.

And now the water is gone.

“It can’t be,” Eodwulf says in disbelief, for he too had come running at Astrid’s shouts. “I - I drew water from it this morning. Father, we made the tea this morning with -”

“I know,” Father says. He’s still staring down to the bottom of the well. There is something distant in his voice. “We did.”

“How could it just be _gone_?” Astrid is saying. Caleb, too, can’t tear his eyes from the empty well. Something about the bleakness of dry stone at the bottom of the pit sends shivers of apprehension crawling up his back. “That’s - that’s impossible, I don’t know how -”

“This is our punishment,” Father says, interrupting her. Finally he turns back to face them, and his face is like slate. “This is retribution for our trespasses. We must -”

“Praying isn’t going to help,” Caleb says desperately. The empty well is pitching him into panic. “We can’t live without water, Father.”

The gaze Father turns on him chills him to his very core. He almost steps back, almost cowers, as if Father is going to strike him again for talking back. In the space of an instant he thinks he sees Father’s hand twitch, tries not to flinch, but the blow never comes.

Instead, Father just pins him down with that cold gaze for one breath, two, three, before he turns back to walk into the house.

“Get water from the river,” he says.

He closes the door behind him. and for a moment all the three of them can do is stand there. Belatedly, Caleb realizes his hand his being crushed. Astrid is still holding tight to him.

“This isn’t normal,” she says, in a very small voice.

“Caleb, please,” Eodwulf says, under his breath. “Please come with us. You can’t stay here.”

“Then how will Father survive?” Caleb asks. He can almost hear the defeat in his own voice, sapped by hunger and fear. “He can’t chop wood and fetch water from the river - he’ll die if we leave him alone. His blood will be on my hands if I leave too. I can’t. I...I can’t be responsible for that.”

“But if you stay then _you_ might die,” Astrid presses. She shifts closer to him, pulling both him and Wulf into an embrace. It’s only when they’re pressed close that Caleb feels she’s shaking. “I don’t know what’s going on, Caleb, but something’s not right.”

“I think it’s going to get worse,” Eodwulf murmurs. “And once the snows start, you’ll be trapped here.”

Caleb squeezes the both of them, briefly, before stepping back. “We should go get the water before it gets too much darker,” he says. “Astrid, could you get the lantern?”

Before he turns his back he catches Astrid and Wulf exchanging a look of concern, but a moment later they follow.

  
***

 

He goes up to bed early that night. After walking back from the river, he and Wulf each laden with two buckets of water while Astrid led the way with the lantern, though she insisted on carrying one of Caleb’s full buckets back for him. Although he’d put up a brief fight, inwardly he was grateful beyond measure. Cold and hunger have wilted him.

All he wants to do now is curl up and sleep the remaining hours away until he can eat again. Breakfast tomorrow might not be much more than a thin slice of toast smeared with butter and a slice of cheese, but the thought of it makes his mouth flood with saliva. More than anything, he would like an entire plate of fried eggs, but that is now out of the question.

He bids Father and Astrid and Wulf a murmured goodnight before climbing the little staircare up to their shared room. The kitchen smells of winter stew and the savory aromas makes him light-headed; he shuts the door heavily against it as if that will somehow ward off the hunger it summons.

He pulls his boots off, then his coat, and unwinds his scarf to drape across his bedpost. Sitting on his mattress pulls all of the weariness out of his bones. Lifting the covers to tuck himself under is suddenly a nigh-impossible task, as though his arms are weighted down with lead. Somehow, though, he manages, and settles back against his pillow with a sigh.

Something doesn’t feel right.

It’s ever so subtly off. He can’t put his finger on it for a moment, but then reaches his hand beneath his pillow and tries not to yelp in surprise.

Someone has placed a roll of bread beneath his pillow. He stares at it, unbelieving. Nestled between pillow and sheet, it’s still pleasantly warm, and when he breaks it in half a burst of warm, yeasty steam escapes. His stomach gives a rapturous shudder, and seconds later he’s shoving a fist-side half into his mouth, tearing into the chewy crust with his teeth as if he’s never going to eat again.

It tastes - different from what they usually bake. Something about it is earthier, nuttier, there’s a brief tang to it as he chews and swallows. It’s like nothing he’s ever tasted before, but it is food, and it is there, and he is starving.

He tries to rationalize it when he’s finished. His stomach is full, but starting to cramp at the ravenous way he’d eaten. Perhaps Astrid or Wulf snuck some of the day’s baking into his bed - but then, he had been with them for the past several hours, working and drawing water from the river. They are running low on flour, and besides - his siblings know the consequences of interfering in one of Father’s punishments.

He falls asleep musing on it, but strangely, it is not troubling as it might be.

After all, it’s not the strangest thing that’s happened today.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what is UP friends I finally have another chapter for you!   
> On a more serious note, I'm only able to update due to my university's classes being canceled due to the Camp Fire in California. I can't afford donations myself because of that impoverished student life, and I don't have a ko-fi, but! I humbly beseech, if you are enjoying this (or any of my other) fics, to donate to the victims of the fire.   
> I hope you enjoy this update, and once more I thank you for your comments and kudos, which mean the world and carry me through midterms and papers. ♥

 Caleb wakes outside and looks up to see the sky has gone out.

All color has been drained from the yard, from the cabin, from the barn. The remaining yellow-brown tufts of dried grass lingering around the fence posts are gray, ash-coated. A soft breeze stirs the hair at the back of his neck but it isn’t cold with the impending chill of winter. Nor is it warm. The distant tree tops remain dead in the breeze. Their stillness is as if someone has painted them into existence as static, skeletal branches.

He can’t hear the chickens clucking, nor the bells on the cows and goats, nor the distant murmur of the river. The air is somehow muted, and Caleb is suddenly afraid that if he speaks aloud it will mean the end of the world, that everything will shatter apart if one human sound ruptures the perfect quiet.

He walks from the middle of the yard, where he stood as he opened his eyes, and into the cabin. His boots are hushed on the wooden stairs; the door creaks open like a sigh.

A pale fire burns in the kitchen hearth, but there is no one to tend it. The home-scents of smoke and spices, baked bread and drying wool are gone. There is no scent whatsoever, just the soft blank neutrality of dust.

Caleb ducks into the little cubby of a hallway that leads to Father’s room from the kitchen and, hesitant with his own daring, places the palm of his hand on the smooth plane of wood. It swings inward at the suggestion of touch.

Father is gone. The bed is empty. Also absent are the tomes of the Great One, their Platinum Redeemer, thick-bound with leather. Father keeps them on a shelf next to his bed, but they are gone, along with the gleaming holy symbol he prayed to upon waking and before sleeping.

It as if the man never existed in this room.

Caleb is disturbed that he is not disturbed by this notion. He backs out of the room and closes the door behind him. Something within him tugs him to go upstairs, but in his heart he knows he will not find Astrid and Eodwulf up there.

Still, he must follow the surging tug in his gut. The rickety steps up to the loft don’t creak beneath his weight, and in the back of his mind Caleb knows he should be frightened, but the only feeling he can muster is peace. He opens the door to the bedroom.

Astrid and Eodwulf’s beds are gone. There is only his bed, beneath its window, and beyond the windowpane the searing blackness of the sky beyond.

There is someone in his bed.

He is lounging, barefoot and sweet-eyed, beneath white sheets. A smile curves his lips as he sees Caleb; his entire face lights up.

“There you are, darling,” he sighs. His voice is like silk, like every soft thing Caleb has ever felt. “You found me.”

Caleb is at a loss. This is the most beautiful person he’s ever seen, man or woman, but then he blinks and sees the jet horns, like a ram’s, protruding from the shock of long and colorless curls on his head.

“Am I imagining you?” he asks, still lingering at the doorway. His fingers are so tense against the doorway they ache.

“No, darling,” says this beautiful man. “I know you are lonely. I have seen it in your heart. I can taste its bitterness.” He pauses, tilting his head, and Caleb notices his eyelashes are very long, and his eyes have no pupils - just one blank color that seems to eminate a faint glow. “But you have not dreamt me up.”

That, is at least, somewhat heartening. Caleb takes a step further, takes in the details of this stranger - the glittering jewels and chains draped between his horns; the tip of a tail he sees draping from beneath a rumpled sheet. His heart aches. His body aches.

Something in the back of his mind - something that sounds like Father - is screaming at him to run, to rebuke this beautiful person, to call upon the Platinum Redeemer to deliver him.

Caleb walks closer instead. There is no malice on this person’s face, only a sweet kind of joy that parts his lips; Caleb can see sharp teeth.

“You found my gift,” this beautiful person says, sounding immensely pleased. “Did you like it?”

It takes Caleb some recollection to suss out what, exactly, he means by that. His thoughts feel slow, and dredging them up is like pulling them from molasses. “Yes,” he says, when he thinks he has the answer. A taste-memory on his tongue: A soft roll of bread, recently eaten. Warmth that blanketed his empty and echoing stomach.

The beautiful man props himself up with an elbow, and as the sheets fall away Caleb can see he is entirely naked beneath the flimsy white bed linens. He reaches for Caleb with long, clawed fingers, dark at the tips as if stained with coal-dust or ink.

“Should I be afraid of you?” Caleb blurts, looking between his claws and his sweet smile which, if anything, grows wider.

“Oh, darling,” he sighs. He tilts his head to one side as he looks at Caleb, sending a cascade of dark curls spilling over one bare shoulder. “You would be a fool if you weren’t. And I know you are no fool.”

Caleb still feels no compulsion to run. He steps closer, letting those claws close around his wrist, the scrape of nails on the thin skin over the veins in his wrists raising the fine hairs on the back of his neck.

He cannot remember the last time someone who wasn’t family touched him. It as if the slow and honeyed feeling weighing down his thoughts fills the room. Every motion is stretched out into a long series of moments - this exquisite man pulls him down onto the bed, and he follows.

“I want nothing from you,” he breathes, so close to Caleb’s face he can feel the soft gust of his breath, the tickling strands of his hair as they brush his skin, “except that which you freely give.”

Caleb closes his eyes when a soft palm cups his cheek; he has never felt anything softer. Nothing in his life has ever been this good.

“Please,” Caleb says, but he doesn’t even know what he’s asking for. He can’t open his eyes, can’t bring himself to move closer, can’t bring himself to ask for things he knows he wants. He hovers, caught up in a web of longing, feeling the bitter ache of loneliness assuaged with the simple touch of a soft hand to his face.

He has never been kissed before.

It is a surprise when he feels lips against his own - he is shocked at the softness, more of a caress of the man’s mouth against his. When he gasps the caress repeats again, firmer this time, and Caleb reaches to hold the man’s palm against his face in a silent plea. A strange sensation against his lips - the soft, pleased moan escaping the man’s mouth and ending up trapped against his. He wants it. He wants more. He never wants the softness to end, wants to stay here kissing someone beautiful, someone who wants him, forever -

Caleb wakes with a gasp, and this time the room is cloaked in the dim navy color of night. The sky beyond his window is full of stars that disappear and reappear behind black clouds.

Astrid and Eodwulf are both looking at him - they’re awake, speaking in hushed whispers as their heads are bowed over the trunk at the foot of Astrid’s bed.

“Caleb?” Wulf whispers.

Caleb scrubs his face with both hands. His lips tingle, as if his flesh is scoured with the affection of someone else. He can still feel the lingering shreds of the dream at the corners of his mind and he wants to reach for them, to pull until he is back in that colorless room.

“What are you two doing?” he asks. Then he realizes the room is lit by one of the soft globes of light that Wulf’s summoned, floating over their heads like a dim and miniature sun.

The sight of it doesn’t make him frightened, any more. If anything, a bitter pang of jealousy aches in his stomach.

Then he notices they are both fully dressed, bundled in several heavy layers. Astrid peers at him and there are dark shadows in the hollows beneath her eyes.

“Please, Caleb,” she whispers. “It’s not too late. We can be gone before Father even wakes.”

He closes his eyes. He cannot have this discussion with them again. “I can’t, Astrid. I’m sorry.”

“We can come back in the spring, after the snows have melted,” Wulf says. He looks between Astrid and Caleb, and there is a gentle optimism in his voice that goes unreflected in his eyes. But Eodwulf has always been like this: His optimist’s heart survived their childhood and keeps beating even now, despite everything that’s happened. Caleb suddenly feels wretched with how much he loves them.

It is almost enough to spur him out of bed and into his clothes and boots. Almost.

“Perhaps Father will be less angry by the spring,” Caleb agrees. Wulf bites his bottom lip and nods.

“Perhaps,” he agrees. With a wave of his hand he directs the globe of light to hover over Astrid’s shoulder as she digs around in the bottom of her trunk. They do not have very many possessions, but Caleb can see the indecision on her face as she sorts through what to take and what must stay. Her knitting needles and a ball of yarn go into the bundle she’s already made, as do an extra set of shoes with tarnished buckles. But then she picks up the doll that came from the orphanage with her, a ratty thing now missing an arm and one of its button eyes, and holds it close.

“We should hurry,” Wulf murmurs. Astrid nods, her mouth a thin and wavering line.

“I’m sorry,” she says, setting the doll back into her trunk. “I just...need to say goodbye.”

Caleb does rise from bed, and for a moment they both turn to look at him with fresh hope in their eyes. But he shakes his head, and Astrid sighs before slowly closing the lid of her trunk without making a sound. Wulf is baling his bundle of posessions into a tidy pack on his bed; Caleb can hear the rattle of dried grain in a tin as he fastens it up.

“Please be careful, you two,” Caleb says. Apprehension steals over him. Something whispers that this will be the last he sees of them - hushed and hurried moments in the light of forbidden magic. He cannot say if that apprehension is because he fears for them, or because he fears for himself.

Unbidden, he glances back to his bed, and half-expects to see a sweet-eyed man with a voice like silk waiting for him to return to it. Then he must shake himself out of it: It was only a dream, born of his wasting loneliness, and the more important thing at hand is Astrid and Eodwulf’s imminent departure.

“Don’t fret about us,” says Wulf. He gives Caleb a smile that’s as shaky as it is bright, and hoists his pack onto his back, testing the distribution of the weight. “We’ll be back in the spring, before you know it.”

“Take care of yourself,” Astrid adds, finishing the top button of her heavy coat. Her brow is creased with worry as she looks Caleb in the eyes. “Promise me you will. Something strange is going on and I...don’t like the idea of you being here alone.”

“I promise,” says Caleb. “I won’t be alone.”

 

***

 

Wulf departs first.

There had been a brief and quiet squabble between him and Astrid over who should get a head start, stealing out of the house one at a time to avoid making a great deal of noise. In the end, Wulf’s ability to summon light wins out over Astrid’s recalcitrant stubbornness, and he kisses Astrid firmly on the forehead before turning to Caleb.

“You be careful too,” he says, and pulls Caleb into a swift embrace.

“I’ll be fine,” Caleb mumbles against the thick wool of Wulf’s coat. His brother claps him on the back after releasing him.

“Until the spring,” he says, giving Caleb a hearty smile. “When the snows melt.”

“Unless they keep you so busy at the Academy that you cannot escape,” Caleb says. Wulf huffs a silent laugh and squeezes his shoulders one last time before turning to carefully pick his way across the floor. Years of living up here and trying to avoid rousnig Father’s temper make avoiding the creaky boards second nature.

Within moments, Wulf is at the door. He pauses with his hand on the knob to look back and that’s the last Caleb sees of him - one brief backward glance, fear and hope alight in his eyes, before he extinguishes his light and leaves.

They’ve planned for Wulf to leave and wait for Astrid by the treeline outside of their fenced-in yard, leaving Astrid waiting next to Caleb for something like ten minutes. She is restless; her nervous energy fills the room so swiftly and heavily that Caleb begins to feel antsy himself.

“When we come back,” she whispers after several unbearable moments. “We’re taking you with us. Father can fend for himself in the spring.”

“What will I do, Astrid?” He can just barely see that she is fidgeting in the dark. Her fingers are twisting the loose leather end of her belt over and over, tighter and tighter, until it can turn no more. Then she releases it and repeats the whole process.

“Find work,” she says. “You could apply to the Academy as well.”

Caleb balks. “Astrid, I do not think -”

“Do not think,” she cuts him off, dropping the end of her belt. She steps lightly over one particularly creaky floorboard to take his hand. “Do you remember? The orphanage?”

Caleb does. He remembers the misery, the pinch of hunger and the blistering of shoes three sizes too small. He remembers clinging tight to Astrid and Eodwulf in a cot only meant for one child, set apart from the other children not by official decree but because of the cruelty of the others, mundane and non-magical little urchins violent in their desire to pick out and punish those different from them.

“I remember,” he says at last.

“Your magic has always been stronger than Wulf’s and mine,” she says. She squeezes his hand. “Were it not for him taking us in, you might have grown up to be an Archmage.”

“Perhaps,” he says. The brief fantasy is tantalizing - an image of power unchecked and unfettered, the freedom to do as he wishes, to let the wheels of his mind spin freely instead of letting them rust under physical labor. “But perhaps I might have grown up to be a wretched beggar.”

Astrid sighs. “One day you’ll grow tired of not letting yourself have good things,” she says, and Caleb can hear both sadness and resignation in her voice.

Good things. Unbidden, Caleb thinks of the dream, of being kissed, of pupilless eyes lined in kohl and soft hands holding him. Those were all things so good, so good and sweet, he wants to cry.

“You ought to get going,” he says, instead of telling Astrid about those good things he does want. “It will start to get light very soon.”

Astrid squeezes his hand before throwing her arms around him, nearly barrelling him over with the extra weight of her pack. “We love you,” she says, kissing his cheek. “Don’t let Father treat you so ill. You’re better than him.”

Caleb laughs, unable to keep the bitter humor from his tone. “I can try, but we might not want to see how that goes.”

“Remember,” she says softly, hugging him a little tighter before stepping back. “Springtime, we’ll be here.”

She’s almost at the door when the tears begin to blur his vision. They come on so suddenly he’s almost surprised, and his heart feels like its being torn in two when Astrid puts her hand on the knob.

“I’ll miss you until then,” he manages to choke out, bringing up a hand to wipe away the tears that keep welling up.

“We’ll miss you too,” his sister murmurs sadly at him, and then she is gone as well.

 

***

 

Caleb cannot fall back asleep no matter how long he lies awake, staring at the slanted boards of the ceiling, so about an hour before the sun begins to rise, by his estimation, he rises and dresses to begin breakfast.

He stokes the coals in the hearth until they are glowing with heat, and leans against the wooden mantle feeling heavy, suddenly, as though his limbs have been made lead. The warmth is pleasant but cannot melt away the leaden feeling, and for several moments it is all he can do to stare into the glowing coals. He thinks of nothing. The house is utterly silent. The inside of his head is silent, but in a way that is bleak-white like snowdrifts rather than peaceful.

Minutes slip silently by in the dark. The coals shimmer orange and red in the hearth, a constant shift of color and heat. Caleb wonders if there is something to be read from them, some sort of message or omen to be gleaned from the crackling warmth, before he finally pulls himself away and into the pantry.

The flour stores are worse than he thought. Unable to resist peeking into the pantry, his worst fears are confirmed: It doesn’t matter that they’ll be baking for two less mouths. Caleb thinks about the amount of flour that goes into a loaf, weighs it against what remains in the bottom of the sack, and reaches for one of the wheels of cheese and a jar of pickled radishes put up last summer.

Eating is joyless, despite the sour-sweet spice of crisp vegetables on his tongue, tasting of warmer weather. He toasts cheese on the thinnest sliver of bread that he dare cut off and puts the kettle on as the sky outside the kitchen window drifts from black to a dreamy gray, the muted tone of a winter morning that promises ice.

It will snow soon. Caleb knows it in his bones and his gut, as he hears stirrings behind the doors of Ikithon’s room.

Father emerges some minutes later, dressed. Caleb’s entrails turn to ice, colder than the wind outside must be, when Ikithon’s gaze travels around the room and finally lands on him.

“Are Astrid and Eodwulf still abed?” he asks. It is all Caleb can do to shake his head. Ikithon’s lips curdle into a scowl.

“Already at their tasks for today, then?”

“No, Father.” Caleb can’t interject any feeling into his voice; it is as if the dull lead in his limbs has enveloped his throat. “They are gone.”

“Gone?” Ikithon repeats, incredulously. The very notion must be absurd to him, for he scoffs and mutters, “ _gone_ ,” under his breath, as if Caleb’s siblings had been magicked away in the night.

Caleb can’t say anything. Ikithon is impossible to read in this humor; further elaboration or lies may provoke something now, or merely set flame beneath a pot of rage that will simmer for hours before boiling over. Digging his fingernails into the flesh of his palm, Caleb can only sit and wait to see which.

“Where have they gone,” Ikithon finally says. For his age and his aching bones he still cuts a powerful and imposing figure when he crosses to the hearth, swinging the kettle onto the flames.

“Does it matter?” Caleb asks, wearily. “They left in the night.”

“Did you not think to stop them?” Ikithon pins him once more with a frigid stare. “How long have you known?”

“Not long,” says Caleb. A vague answer to be sure, but honest enough. Astrid and Eodwulf have been planning their escape for what must have been months. The warning of a few days isn’t plausible deniability, but at least he was not a co-conspirator for weeks and weeks.

It doesn’t absolve him of guilt in Father’s eyes, Caleb knows. Nothing would, and that was merely the consequence of being born with fire in his veins.

“You let them leave,” Ikithon says. A statement, not a question. “You knew they would abandon us - fools, they would take flight in the middle of winter and you still let them go.”

 _I would have gone too_ , Caleb wishes he could say. Lack of courage strangles the words. _I would have gone save for the guilt of leaving you to die._

“I tried to convince them to stay,” he says instead, and Ikithon snorts.

“You _tried_ ,” he repeats, mocking. “Clearly not hard enough.”

Of all things, anger flares in Caleb’s stomach. For a brief and blinding moment the dormant fire in his veins glows like the embers in the fireplace had, ready to be summoned for - what? To burn the house down, with he and Ikithon inside it?

He digs his nails deeper into the flesh of his palms. “I am sorry,” he says, bowing his head as the kettle begins to steam.

Ikithon says nothing. He dismisses Caleb with a single gesture, and, all too eager to escape the chill of Ikithon’s eyes and the fire singing in his own veins, Caleb flees to the barn.

 

***

 

  
Today it is so cold Caleb’s very bones ache despite the thick padding of his coat. Within moments his bare hands are frigid, fingers numb and uncooperative. It takes him twice as long to feed the animals, huddling back into the barn every few minutes to blow warm air into his cupped hands as the tabby barn cat winds around his ankles and stands on its hind legs, silently begging to be pet.

The cat follows him into the coop. A clutch of fresh eggs sits, warm and inviting in the straw nest, but Caleb doesn’t even waste time checking.

Briefly he wonders what would happen if he tipped the bloody eggs into the dry well, let them sit and fester at the bottom. Somehow that seems like open invitation for things to get worse, so he doesn’t.

But then he wonders - can things get worse?

He picks up Astrid’s chores, and Eodwulf’s as well. The water needs to be fetched from the river, which flows cold and sluggish in a way that promises the coming ice. When he chops the wood, his frozen hands ache as he arranges them around the handle of the axe. Ikithon stares at him with cold fury when he brings in the water before lunch.

The old man is sitting at the table doing...nothing.

Caeb is cold. He is tired. He stands in front of the hearth, thawing his stiff fingers and watching Ikithon, sitting with his hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea.

“Father.” Caleb’s voice is too loud in the silent room, too loud above the crackling of the fire. It takes him a moment to realize he is angry.

No, not angry - _furious_. The heat of it drips through his frozen body, until he is warmed through with it.

Ikithon deigns to look at him. But he says nothing.

He is Father. He is Ikithon, beloved in the eyes of the Platinum Dragon. He need say nothing, nor redeem himself. No one can judge him say the Redeemer, the judge who knows their souls and the dark whisper of damning magic.

Caleb is sick to death of it.

“ _Father_ ,” Caleb says again. His palms are hot. He turns away from the fire, feeling the crackling glow of it in his thawing blood. He exhales, slowly, through his nostrils. He cannot lose control, even if the desire to pull down this entire house with fury and flame sparks bright within him. “It’s just you and I. I cannot do everything by myself.”

Ikithon takes a slow sip of his tea. Caleb can see the dark glimmer of his eyes under the bushy brows as he regards his son, can see the reflection of the firelight in his coal-black pupils. “Perhaps,” he says, “you should have thought of that before you let your brother and sister leave.”

Caleb closes his eyes against the sick wave of anger that rises in him. It would be so easy. The fire has remained banked within his flesh; a soft and sweet voice whispers _yes, yes, tend the flames, let them roar._ It feels like a kiss on the underside of his skin. It feels like damnation.

 _Oh darling_ , sighs that voice from his dreams. It takes Astrid’s unspoken question to pose with its own lilting voice. _When will you tire of the suffering? When will you let yourself have good things?_

“I’m going to go fish for supper,” Caleb says with finality, opening eyes he didn’t realize were shut tight against the anger. “Get whatever we need to have with it.”

He doesn’t hear the smashing of pottery until he is outside.

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo I know I still have most of the NSFW Challenge to get through but I was gripped with the urge to write a completely self-indulgent AU and you know what? I had to follow my bliss. (one day i'll suck less at writing summaries ;; )  
> Listen. I love The Witch even though I'm a chicken who can't watch it by myself. This isn't going to be a carbon copy of the movie; I'm enjoying taking the atmosphere of the film and turning it into something unique. I've also never written horror/suspense before, so I'm trying something totally new with my writing style - I hope it reads well and doesn't bore everyone to tears! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading so far, and I hope you stick with me through this entirely self-indulgent exercise!


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